Joan Copeland passed away on January 5 at the age of 99 and sleeping peacefully at her home. Arthur Miller's sister had a long and successful career on Broadway and, in her personal life, she was a close friend of her sister-in-law Marilyn Monroe with whom Miller lived a passionate and stormy relationship.
"Marilyn was proof that seriousness could not coexist in one person" wrote Arthur Miller after ending his marriage relationship with the great Hollywood diva, Marilyn Monroe.
Yet years ago, he had been smitten by her genuineness, her freedom, and her beauty. Arthur Miller and Marilyn Monroe met at a party held in Hollywood for the premiere of a film. Elia Kazan attended this event and had to attend to the guests, so he asked his good friend Miller to take care of "his girl", Marilyn, with whom he had an open and carefree love affair.
Arthur waited on Monroe during the party and both fell in love with each other. The writer was married to Mary Slattery at the time. She had been his girlfriend since adolescence and together they had given birth to several children in common, however, he was stronger than his attraction to Marilyn.
So much so that Arthur and the blonde secretly saw each other sporadically for the next five years until he took the big step of divorcing and betting on that couple that aroused great surprise in the world of culture because, certainly, their profiles were completely different.
She, a goddess of the movies who came out of a stormy relationship with Joe Di Maggio, he, a serious writer who some pointed out as a communist and who questioned, precisely, everything that Monroe represented on a social and public level.
Despite all that, love united them and they soon announced that they were getting married. He was a free man and she converted to Judaism out of love and respect for her future husband. The wedding was finally celebrated on June 29, 1956.
What was going to be the happiest day of her life was marked by a great tragedy that they would never forget, especially Marilyn, who was left with a tremendous feeling of guilt that accompanied her until the end of her days.
It is about the death of the young journalist Mara Scherbatoff who covered the event as paparazzi. Since Miller and Marilyn were well aware of his fame, they had already arranged a press conference at his home in Connecticut, but before the civil ceremony they would visit his cousin's home in privacy.
Scherbatoff did her research and discovered that the cousin lived nearby, so while her partner set up the photographic equipment in the area of the press conference, she took the car and went out to inspect the area in search of lovebirds.
Bad luck wanted her to locate them on board the green car of Arthur's cousin who, seeing that he was chasing them, stepped on the accelerator to get rid of the photographs of him. In a matter of seconds, on a sharp curve, the reporter lost control of her vehicle and went off the road, crashing hard into a tree that sent her flying through the windshield of her car.
She was seriously injured and she died at the hospital. Parallel to this, the bride and groom appeared before the press, he smoking and visibly nervous, she gone, as if in shock by what had happened. They didn't know what to say and Marilyn showed the feeling that devoured her inside saying that, if it wasn't for them, she Mara would still be alive. Miller, colder in that aspect, accused the harshness of the persecution and the bad arts of the press that, rightly so, he lacked. It is inevitable to think of the opposite case with Lady Di, for example.
Arthur convinced Marilyn not to spoil that day and marry him, they ended up doing it at sunset but without guests, only with his cousin and his wife as witnesses of said link, the official celebration and the traditional Jewish ceremony took place on one July in New York with the family, a total of 30 guests.
Monroe struggled to fit in with Miller's children, ages 9 and 12 at the time, and to become a devoted housewife to her husband, but the truth was that she was slowly fading just like him. her love with Miller.
The fairy tale did not last long, after four years they separated, 1961 being the year of their official divorce with a lot of wear and tear since Marilyn was already abusing drugs and alcohol in addition to the rumors of infidelity on both sides, of course.
While they were shooting their last movie together, 'The Misfits', Monroe was already showing alarming signs of her bad life and her mental health imbalances, but Miller, on that same set, experienced a crush on another woman, the photographer Inge Morath.
He ended up marrying her in February 1962 and perhaps Marilyn could not bear such news given that, just six months after said marriage, he died of an overdose of sleeping pills. Athur revealed years later, in his autobiography, that he was in the Nevada desert when he was called to tell him that Monroe was dying and, according to his account, he fainted right there in the face of the vital catastrophe that finally ended with the death of one of his brothers. the great loves of his life.
